Word: norfleet
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...photographs then move into a happier, more light-hearted section that reveal Norfleet's humor. "Toys" is a charming (well, as charming as beetles really can be) whimsical photograph of three insects flying kites. (The kites are also other insects, which suggests darker connotations to "having fun.") The tension throughout the book between terrestrial and aerial insects is successfully addressed in this photograph through the device of the kite's string, which acts as a unifying force between the sky and the sand...
...Norfleet's "Frolic" is also cheerful, while "Who's the Fairest of Them All" provides witty commentary not only on the aesthetics of insects (which not all of us find as attractive, as, say, horses or bunnies) and our own human vanity through the Narcissus allegory but on the inherent vanity in artistic expression as well. The photograph is also a display of Norfleet's artistic ingenuity, as it integrates both the insect and its mirror image seamlessly. Later in the book, "Of Course We Prayed" presents a similar commentary, as Norfleet uses praying mantises as a clever...
...favorite photograph by far was "Yet Another Post-Modern Sunset," in which various bugs look over a stone wall at a vivid sunset of oranges and reds. Norfleet is simultaneously poking fun at both the post-modernists and herself. But she is also creating a striking contrast between the fiery imagery of the sunset and her final piece, "Untitled," where Norfleet's insects appear embedded in a glacier, with only a few appendages exposed to the light...
...leaving her last piece untitled, Norfleet is using a device to force her audience to pause and reflect upon what they have just seen. Why did she leave her last piece untitled? What would I title...
...Norfleet gives us some clue as to her position as she writes, "My insects became the survivors in a barren world as they played out history." So maybe Norfleet left the last photograph untitled as a segueway into the future, in another clever pun. After all, ugly as they may be, bugs are the oldest things around...